Dr Nici Long

Tag: healing

  • Trauma As A Disruption Of Connection

    “Trauma is a chronic disruption of connection” – Stephen Porges

     

    “We matter deeply to one another for our very well being…our social interactions play an important role in the everyday regulation of our internal biological systems throughout our lives…we cannot do without significant ‘others’ and remain in health.” (De Zulueta, p.44)

     

    All children require warm, consistent, and reliable caregiving for optimal development. In contrast, childhood experiences of loss, neglect and maltreatment can have a profound effect upon young children’s development (including their relational, emotional, behavioural, and cognitive functioning. For example:

    ·       Relational – Trauma shapes how a child gets their needs met.

    What does their proximity-seeking look like, or their avoidance?

     

    ·       Emotional – when a child has experienced trauma their nervous system is activated in the context of threat.

    Reactivity is key to survival and happens at a subconscious level.

    Fight/Flight, Dissociate, Internalising and/or externalising behaviours?

     

    ·       Cognitive – The impact of trauma on a child’s functioning can be deemed acquired neurodivergence.

     

     

    “recovery can take place only within the context of relationships: it cannot occur in isolation” – Judith Herman

     

    When a child has been consistently in receipt of an attuned and reparative relationship, they are more able to change their previous expectations of relationships. (University of East Anglia, Secure Base; Howe 1996, Wilson et al 2003, Cairns 2003, Beek and Schofield 2004).

    Via this connection and a new sense of safety within relationship, a child can re-pattern their nervous system, amplify healthy neural connections, create a new story/ sense of self.

    When a child is freed up from survival mode they can move into thrive – including reflective responses, resilience, creativity and the capacity to maximise their potential.

     

    WIN

    Attachment has historically been seen as infant behaviour directed towards the caregiver. However, we now recognise it as a form of connection that arises out of the caregiver’s responses to a child’s needs:

    ·       Every child needs experiences of attunement to their physical, psychological and emotional needs. A lack of attuned caregiving leaves a child to manage their own survival needs, this reduces their energy for cognitive and social-emotional development.

    ·       Attunement is a timely and empathic response to a child’s needs even when expressed through dysregulated behaviours. It involves a reflective relational right brain to right brain response to a child’s needs and experiences.

    ·       “Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected.” Dan Siegel.

    ·       Attachment is a type of psychobiological attunement that is required throughout life. (De Zulueta).

    ·       Attuned parenting is built upon the capacity to reflect upon the child’s underlying needs rather than react to their behaviour.

     

     

    A healthy attachment figure needs to be a consistent, co-regulating caregiver, with the capacity to attune to the child’s needs:

    • Available – physically and emotionally
    • Consistent, reliable, trustworthy
    • Empathic understanding – sensitive to the child’s perspective

    The caregiver needs to provide responses that are Timely, Practical/Physical, Empathic/Emotional

    Children who have experienced trauma require a higher level of co-regulation to soothe their nervous system – oxytocin has been described as “a physiological metaphor for safety.” Co-regulation conveys a sense of “All is well.”

     

    What Gets in The Way?

    ·       Child – narratives and strategies that the child has learnt to feel safe in the past.

    ·       Parent – assumptions, judgements, anxieties/stress, own childhood history, rescuing behaviour.

     

    WIGO – What Is Going On ?

    WIN – What Is Needed ?

    Noticing, reflecting on and decoding the child’s/own narratives and strategies

    Ruptures and dysregulation provide opportunities for repair –reparative experiences, reparative narratives.

    Self-care, self-awareness, reflective process

    The majority of our Processing happens swiftly and unconsciously -a reaction “reactivity.” Honed and strengthened. Self-awareness helps us to understand our distorted patterns and facilitates choice and change.

  • Welcome & About Me

    Welcome to the blog! Here you will find information guides, short posts and content offering wellbeing support for all.

    My Work:

    I am very grateful to have the opportunity to live and work amidst the beauty of Cumbria. I am surrounded by a landscape and people that resource and support me in my parenting role as a mother of three thriving young adults, and as a Consultant Psychologist.

    I provide psychological assessments and therapy for children, adults and families, both those who have experiences of Local Authority care and adoption, and also families and individuals who have not.

    I also provide consultation and training to a wide range of professionals, with a focus upon parenting, resilience, wellbeing & the unconscious stories we live by.

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    ​My work primarily focuses upon emotional wellbeing or as my daughters might say:

    ‘living your best life.’

    My work is trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive whilst being focused upon personal growth and wellbeing.

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    I use an integrative approach that is underpinned by a person-centred/child-centred perspective that validates the client’s experience. I combine this with a psychodynamic approach that recognises the power of the unconscious as the unconscious driver of our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Since much of our unconscious mind remains in the shadow (unavailable to our conscious awareness) I believe that developing our ability to be reflective and empathic about our unconscious process is key to wellbeing. e.g., often we allow our critical voice to have full reign when we behave in ways that we regret, but it can be more beneficial if we speak kindly to ourselves and take the time to empathically understand the unconscious driver of the faux pas or dysregulated behaviour.

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    We can explore these aspects of ourselves through personal development activities such as somatic or creative practices like journaling or mindfulness. However if you have a history of trauma this work is ideally done at depth with a skilled professional who is trauma-sensitive and one who understands unconscious dynamics and defences.

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    Wellbeing, resilience and emotional intelligence occur through attuned relationships, similarly, trauma recovery occurs through attuned and reparative relationships.

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    A key concept in my work is the idea of an embodied mind that is shaped by our environment, and in particular our relationships with our primary caregivers (typically our parents), our culture and our peers. We are shaped by relationships and shaped by the storied world that we live in.

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    Since the early 90’s I have been developing my expertise in the field of Wellbeing, Parenting, Relational Wellbeing, and Developmental Trauma & Dissociation. I use an integrative psychological approach that is informed by six years of doctoral training in both clinical and counselling psychology, and augmented by training in creative approaches, storytelling, mindfulness, relaxation and somatic movement & wellbeing.

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    ​The stories that we ‘take in’ shape the stories that we tell about ourselves, and the stories we tell are the stories we live by.

    Please note, whilst I welcome enquiries, I have a waiting list that is often as long as a year. You can find other registered practitioners via the HCPC, BPS, UKCP and BACP.